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Last word on the Apple Watch: I have no idea if it’s genius or crap

MarekFuchs

Columnist

Dick Tracy, Tim Cook — the biggest proponents of a smartwatch.

When it comes to the Apple Watch, do you want proof of concept? Well, too bad.

This was the week Apple
AAPL, -1.92%lifted the veil on its long-awaited watch, so everyone from 14-year-old tweeters to The New York Times plunked down opinions. If you passed unconsciously through the week, you couldn’t have missed it. As the Middle East burned, even President Obama opined on the most imperative question of the week: Fitbit or Apple Watch?

Revelations about presidential undergarments aside, if anyone can orchestrate a change in behavior, I suppose it’s Apple. Apple, after all, seems to think out our future better than we do, habituating us to products we never knew existed. But when your frame of reference for wearable computers starts with Dick Tracy and ends with Richie Rich, you know progress might not be straight as a string.

That did not, of course, stop the media, which clambered over one another with all the deep thoughts and complex perceptions, despite the fact that they had, at best, a few quick minutes to actually play with the smartwatch.

With or without wordplay, the media described the Apple Watch as either earthly perfection or a hunk of crap. There was little in the way of middle ground and few even deigned to include a qualifier. The Wall Street Journal did us a mercy there: “Nobody can really judge the Apple Watch yet. With new tech, we often can’t understand exactly what’s going to make it stick.”

“I haven’t a clue” is hardly a sexy story line, but it is one that probably hews closer to reality. In fact, if the media have only put their grimy little hands on a device for a matter of minutes, “I haven’t a clue” is probably the only reaction as acceptable as simply zipping their lips until the thing actually goes on sale.

In less-fraught news this week, shareholder activists succeeded in getting General Motors
GM, -2.10%
to agree to a buyback, essentially at gunpoint. Do what I say, they threatened, or we will join your board and eat all the Danish. It’s apparently a winning strategy.

Meanwhile, Google
GOOG, -1.72%
Chief Financial Officer Patrick Pichette is retiring to spend time with his family. He made news, though, because he is one of the few who might actually mean it. An executive who says he is retiring to spend time with his family and actually might run a carpool or two proved the ultimate man-bites-dog story. The media could not resist. (Full disclosure: I intend to retire in order to spend time with the family… as soon as they are all grown and out of the house.)

It was a strange week. Increasingly, pot is becoming legal and herbal supplements illegal. And Pepsi
PEP, -0.60%
is reviving its signature “Pepsi Challenge” with a millennium generation twist, officially harnessing social media to corroded gums.

Retail sales were down for the third straight month, though an Alibaba
BABA, +2.77%
investment in Snapchat valued the messaging service at $15 billion. You got that? Apparently, even with an added bounty gifted them by plunging gas prices, American consumers are too busy taking self-portraits up their nostrils to shop.

Who said our nation’s best days are behind us?

Alan Greenspan, for one. The discredited old legend has certainly seen better days. For decades he was thought of as a mythical figure, holding the secrets to economic growth in his magical palm. With hindsight, many realize he was making it up as he went along. But we learned this week that few even realize who Janet Yellen is. In a recognition survey, the Fed chairwoman might be less known than the Culligan Man. What gives there? Is it better for the economy to have a Fed chair who is a rock star or a cellar mouse? I think I’ll stick to easy questions — like briefs or boxers.

Despite all the zaniness this week, it was, in the end, all Apple, all the time — and not just for the Watch. We learned that Apple gets preferential treatment from mall operators, even as it gets the hairy eyeball from the CIA.

We even learned that in some quarters, there is a movement to withhold sex from anyone wearing an Apple Watch: Will anyone really refuse sex to an Apple Watch owner? Unlike the rest of the media this week, I will come straight out and tell you: I haven’t a clue. But just in case — I’m not going to buy one.

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